Restrepo comes through in the clutch once again as Doral secures first baseball title
Doral Academy has now reached the top of the mountain in baseball too.
And for the second time in less than 24 hours, junior first baseman Daniel Restrepo was the big difference maker.
Restrepo’s three-run home run highlighted a four-run fifth inning which provided enough of a cushion for the Firebirds to beat Pensacola Pace 5-4 in the Class 6A state championship game at Hammond Stadium on Saturday night.
“It’s unbelievable,” Restrepo said. “We have a young team so everybody kept telling us next year, next year, but we made it happen this year. We took that personal and we believed in us.”
The Firebirds won their first ever state championship in baseball, adding to the school’s rise to success in multiple sports in recent years.
This high school calendar year, Doral Academy has won state titles in baseball, boys’ soccer and girls’ tennis and its softball team will compete for a championship next week in Clermont.
Doral finished the job after coming up short multiple times in recent years on the road to state including last year’s loss to Palm Beach Gardens Dwyer in the regional finals.
“I was on that team that had 13 seniors and that was the big team, blah, blah that was supposed to win it all,” said Doral ace Frank Menendez, who picked up a win against Dwyer last week in a rematch in the regional finals. “We came in hungry and came out together and won a state championship.”
Doral coach Ralph Suarez also became the first baseball coach to lead two different Miami-Dade County schools to state championships. Suarez, who won four state titles at Brito Miami Private School, also was part of a state championship team as an assistant coach at Gulliver in 2004 as well as four state softball championships as an assistant coach on the Gulliver softball team.
He joins Rich Hofman (Westminster Christian and Westminster Academy), Rich Bielski (Hialeah and Archbishop McCarthy) and Todd Fitz-Gerald (American Heritage and Douglas) among coaches that have won state titles at multiple South Florida area schools.
“It drives me more and people ask me ‘Don’t you get tired?’” said Suarez, who has coached in 18 state tournaments combined between baseball and softball. “This is what I love to do. And it’s really the training part and working with these kids.”
Doral seemingly broke the game open with Restrepo delivering the big blow on a blast to left center.
The play came just moments after third baseman Jake Santos struck out for the final out of the inning. But the ball got away from catcher Broc Parmer who then threw it into right field allowing Santos to reach base and Michael Torres to score, give Doral a 2-0 lead and keep the inning alive.
“He was struggling a little with the offspeed the at-bats before and I just sat fastball because I knew it was coming,” Restrepo said.
Restrepo crossed the plate after his home run and happily held up the team’s good luck charm, “Quackson,” a rubber duck that the team brought to every game this season.
“Our first base coach (Chris Hernandez), when he was in high school they had a little group and their name was the Quack Pack,” said Doral shortstop Adrian Santana. “Our civics teacher has this rubber duck so we brought him out to the game one day and everytime we scored, we would give it to the runner that scored and he’d squeeze it. So we were hoping to go out and get a lot of squeezing of that duck.”
After the game, “Quackson” was in the hands of several Doral players and wearing sunglasses with several chains draped around its neck.
Restrepo finished the two-game tournament with seven RBI after he drove in four runs in Friday night’s 5-4 extra-inning win over Tampa Sickles including the game-winning single in the bottom of the ninth.
“I slept like a baby after that win last night,” Restrepo said.
The Firebirds turned to freshman Torres to put the game away in the bottom of the seventh after Pace narrowed their lead to one run on an RBI triple by Parmer.
Torres proceeded to induce Ty Humphreys to ground out to third to end the game.
Suarez felt confident in his team’s chances with ace Frank Menendez on the mound. Menendez cruised through four scoreless innings before struggling to find the strike zone in the fifth inning.
Menendez walked the first three batters of the inning. Pace plated a run when Brent Cadenhead hit a slow chopper in front of home plate and Austin Starkie slid under the tag of Doral catcher Alejandro Ludeiro to give Pace its first run. Alex McCranie followed with a two-run single cutting Doral’s lead to 5-3.
But Menendez settled in and retired the next three batters in order to minimize the damage. Menendez struck out six, walked five and allowed two earned runs on two hits over five innings.
“As soon as I stepped off the mound, I was stressing out the whole time,” Menendez said. “That last out was a relief. I wanted it so bad for this team.”
This story was originally published May 21, 2022 at 7:50 PM.
